The Question

In addition to all of my blog posts about personal finance, I thought it might be interesting and valuable to start a more technical series of posts geared toward those of my readers who are software developers. I’m going to kick this concept off by answering a question I got in an actual technical interview: given an array of letters in the alphabet, which can appear multiple times, return a hash of letter counts sorted alphabetically. For example, the following array:

There are several reasons I decided to start here: first, I failed the interview, possibly because it was my first time coding on a whiteboard and coding on a whiteboard is, well, terrible—ask any developer, they’ll tell you. Second, this interview question could theoretically pop up for my more-technical readers, so this could be a good resource for them. Third, I wound up using a solution to this problem in a real web application several times at my job at Radial Development Group (AFTER the interview, of course), which means it is, at the very least, a practical question.

The question was given at a fintech/payment processing company, which, as you may guess, means that they work in the Java programming language. Possibly because they were aware I’m unfamiliar with Java, they told me I could write the answer in any language I want (I chose my first and favorite language, Ruby). They also told me that their stack uses JavaScript (which has nothing to do with Java, non-coders) pretty frequently.

So I decided to answer the question in all three languages for this blog post. Let’s start with Ruby.

My Answer in Ruby

First and foremost, I defined a sample array that we’re going to be manipulating:

Pretty simple, right? lettersarray[0] will return ‘s’, lettersarray[1] returns ‘a’, and so on. Ruby lets you use single or double quotes interchangeably (‘‘ vs ““), so this array could just as easily have single quotes around each character. The only significant difference is that double quotes allow string interpolation. It’s an urban legend that single quotes are more performant in Ruby.

I have some duplicates to make sure that my compiler actually counts, so the key ‘h’ returns 3, not 1.

Now we need to define a Ruby method that accepts the array, generates a hash, sorts it, then returns the sorted hash (line numbers added for reference):

Line 1 defines a Ruby method, which I named count_and_sort_letters. It accepts an argument, array, which we’ll be manipulating throughout the rest of the method. The method is closed on line 11 with end.

Line 2 defines an empty hash, letter_counts. I could inline this into line 3 by passing each_with_object an empty hash rather than letter_counts, but I only wanted to sort_by once, since sort operations are generally expensive. Therefore, I needed the variable declared outside of the each block.

Line 3 begins the Ruby each_with_object block. It accepts an enumerable as an argument (an array or a hash, generally, and in this case my empty object, letter_counts). It then passes two arguments into the block: the current element in the enumerable (whichever letter we’re on in letter_counts), and the object we passed in.

We don’t want to return values of 0 in the hash; that is, ”p” => 0 should not be returned. So on line 4 I check whether letter_counts[letter] is truthy or not (in other words, it checks whether that key has already been given a value, because nil is falsey). This means the first iteration is checking whether letter_counts[“s”] exists or not, and returns false. On the fourth iteration, however, letter_counts[“b”] DOES exist, so it executes line 5, incrementing letter_counts[“b”] by 1.

In the instance that the key isn’t already assigned in the letter_counts hash, the else statement beginning on line 6 is executed, creating that key with a value of 1 in the hash. So in the first iteration, letter_counts[“p”] gets the value 1.

After the each_with_object loop finished, I call sort_by on the hash on line 10. I pass it a one-line block (in Ruby, { } is the one-liner equivalent to do … end). It accepts the key and value of each element in the hash, k and v, and is told to sort using k rather than v (the letter, not the count). Since Ruby’s sort_by returns an array, I then call to_h to convert it back to a hash instead. Ruby methods return their last line unless you tell them to do otherwise, so I don’t need a return statement here.

Ruby acts like Ruby a lot in this example: it returns more or less what you want and doesn’t throw a lot of errors without much effort on my part, but it then needs to be told to sort properly and return a hash.

Like many Ruby developers, I sometimes forget where Ruby ends and Rails begins; I tried calling .present? on letter_counts[letter] and kept getting an error, before finally remembering that .present? is from ActiveSupport in Rails, not Ruby. My if statement works fine without it in this instance, but it wouldn’t act quite so gracefully if you pass in nil in an effort to trip it up.

My Answer in JavaScript

In my experience writing JavaScript in an actual app, developers tend to use libraries like Lodash to get many of the helpful functions other languages take for granted (simple sorting and type checking functionality, for example). For my JavaScript example, I didn’t do this, but I did use ES6 syntax to make for slightly simpler reading.

I set a constant, countedAndSortedLetters, to the value returned by a function on line 1. I pass in array as an argument again, and declare an empty object, unsortedCounts, on line 2. Line 1’s const countedAndSortedLetters = (array) => { syntax looks funky, but is just a slightly-shorter syntax than const countedAndSortedLetters = function(array) { in this case. At Radial, we frequently work with React, meaning arrow functions’ lexical binding of the this keyword makes our code easier to read and understand—we don’t need the const keyword inside our React classes, and we don’t need to call .bind(this) all the time.

I would normally use _.forEach or something similar because it tends to handle a lot of errors and JavaScript gotchas gracefully, but instead used JavaScript’s built-in forEach to iterate through the passed-in array on line 3.

I personally like using JavaScript’s bracket notation over dot notation for objects because 1. it reminds me of Ruby hashes, and 2. it makes it slightly clear that you’re referencing a value on an object, not calling a function (so I’m not hunting for the () at the end of the function name). Lines 4-7 are more or less the same logic as in Ruby: if the key has a value, increment it by 1; otherwise, set it to 1.

JavaScript doesn’t have a great way to sort, or even map, objects (again, Lodash or a similar library is usually very handy here), so instead I define sortedCounts on line 10 as an empty object.

I then get the keys from unsortedCounts as an array, sort() them, and forEach() one more time on line 11. This is a place where ES6 syntax really shines, by the way; .forEach((key) => {}) is very clear syntactically about what it is you’re doing.

Line 12 iterates over the sorted keys and sets that key’s value in sortedCounts.

Line 14 tells the overall arrow function to return sortedCounts, which then assigns that value to our countedAndSortedLetters const.

Some notes:

I was really feeling the struggle of JavaScript without any helper libraries. node_modules is a monster, but it’s also very helpful.

I’ve never liked JavaScript’s syntax for prototype functions, like Object.keys. It feels counterintuitive when I’m writing the code to pass a function on Object an instance of itself.

It’s more obvious here than in the Ruby example that I’m looping twice—as such, it’s probably also less performant than Ruby’s sort_by, if I had to guess. I may consider revising these to see if I can only loop through once to make a more-performant solution.

My Answer in Java

I used repl.it’s online Java compiler for this, which had me name the file (and therefore the class) Main in this example.

I import HashMap on line 1. It’s a Java utility, but throws an error when not imported, so I figure it counts as being part of Java’s main implementation. It gives me the hash structure I’ve been using previously.

Java throws an error if your class isn’t named what your file is named, so line 3 is a class called Main. I think I’ll just let Java be Java here and move on (Repl is great, but it also didn’t seem interested in letting me rename the only file).

public static void main(String []args){ on line 4 is, as far as I can tell from Oracle’s documentation, pretty standard boilerplate for declaring a new class. public means other classes can call this one; static is sort of like self in Ruby in that it’s saying it’s defining a class method, not an instance method for that class; void clarifies that this method does not return a value; and main is the method name, so we’re defining Main.main. (String []args) means that one can pass several strings into the method when called. Interestingly, Main.main throws an error if it returns anything, so this seems to essentially be a good place to call other methods, not a good place to define the main thing we plan to do.

Line 5 defines letterArray, as I’ve been doing. String[] means I’m defining an array of strings, not just one string. I found it confusing that arrays have curly braces {} around them coming from Ruby and JavaScript.

Line 6 calls a method called letterCounter with my letterArray argument.

Line 9 defines the letterCounter private method. private here appears to achieve the same results as defining methods below the private keyword in Ruby. It’s a class method, doesn’t return anything (returns void), is called letterCounter, and accepts an array of strings called letterArray.

Line 10 continues the trend of declaring everything in Java. In order to make a hash named letterCounts, I need to say that I’m making a HashMap with String keys and Integer values, and call new HashMap() to make it an empty HashMap instance.

I used a for loop on line 12, mostly because it was obvious when reading the documentation about it that JavaScript must have pulled this syntax straight from Java. Nice to have one familiar part, at least. As Java and JavaScript devs will doubtlessly know, the syntax here is defining an integer, which is incremented every time you loop through the array until it becomes equal to the array’s size. This is one convenience of having arrays start at index 0 rather than 1, you can say < array.length rather than <= array.length.

Line 13 was initially String letter = String.valueOf(letterArray[i]) because I had an array of chars rather than Strings which Java refuses to convert into strings unless I specifically tell it to.

Lines 14 through 18, again, are pretty much the same logic I’ve used before: to update the letterCounts value at i dependent upon whether it already has a value or not. It was interesting (not good or bad, just odd to my eyes) that Java’s HashMaps use .put and .get to set and get values. My brain immediately connected it to the HTTP verbs PUT and GET, which are similar but not the same.

Line 20 outputs the resultant letterCounts hash.

Some notes:

Java is very, very strict from my perspective, even stricter than JavaScript, which already feels strict to me coming from Ruby. If you don’t tell it exactly what you mean, it will fail, hard.

Errors in Java are wonderfully explicit, even to someone as new to the language as I am. In spite of being unfamiliar with the syntax, I was rarely confused about why my code failed. Even when the error thrown confused me (I’d try returning something the method didn’t expect me to return, for example), Java is like Ruby and JavaScript in that it has good documentation from both the maintainers (Oracle, in this case) and the community (a word which here means “Stack Overflow”).

There’s a lot of boilerplate in Java. I’m pretty spoiled by Ruby.

Java is the only language of the three that gave me exactly what it was I wanted once I played by its rules: the values are sorted all on their own, meaning I didn’t need to loop through the code again, meaning this is probably the most performant of the three letter-sorting methods.

Java feels like Ruby’s father who isn’t on speaking terms with Ruby but is mostly cordial at Thanksgiving. It also feels like JavaScript’s estranged stepfather from JavaScript’s mom’s third marriage. I noticed several object-oriented patterns I’m familiar with (and like) from Ruby, but also some syntactical choices that I presume JavaScript went with because it was how Java did it.

Well, this turned out to be a lot more work than I set out to do. But I hope this was informative for how to pull in a bunch of random, unsorted data, put it in a hash, sort it, and pass it along to the next part of your app—I’ve found this very helpful in Rails apps when pushing information over to a Webpack/JavaScript front end.

What improvements would you make to my implementations? Let me know in the comments!

Starting From Little: Stop Blindly Chasing Dreams

Two months ago, I posted about some of the most reliably-lucrative careers you can pursue in the United States, those that can reliably offer six-figure salaries. Predictably, the results were mostly jobs that require expensive college degrees (which is to say, at least a Bachelor’s Degree).

That’s all well and good for folks who are either wealthy, talented enough to get great scholarships, or who are so determined to pursue those fields that they don’t mind the enormous pile of student loan debt they’ll need to accrue to pursue them. But the thing is, a lot of us aren’t in one of those positions. A lot of us aren’t sure what we want to do. Mainly, we were told to “do whatever we want,” because this is America and you can, supposedly. This tends to lead people to “follow their dreams,” or what they think are maybe their dreams, except that they aren’t that confident that being artistic is really their dream because their heart isn’t quite in it enough to be practicing their art all the time, which is how frequently you need to practice your art these days if you want to stand out.

Some folks work on the art anyway, and persist, and deal with the downsides of pursuing artistic careers, and are probably fulfilled in that. Most folks don’t, because in the end they realize it’s not their dream and they have to prioritize paying their bills over pursuing dreams, at least until they’re financially comfortable.

Now don’t get me wrong, dreams are great. By all means pursue them. But chasing a dream, which might not even be the right dream through poverty or tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, is almost certainly foolishness. Don’t let anyone older than you tell you otherwise; they paid a lot less for college, rent, and a car than you’re going to.

Here’s a better plan: go make good money and also pursue a dream. After that, don’t ditch the day job until the dream job is reliably paying more. Exceptions can be made for folks with high-income spouses or generous parents, maybe, but you should take cost of living seriously in making these decisions, which is not usually part of the “chase your dreams” career advice discussion.

Furthermore, there’s another component to the equation we haven’t discussed: you have a certain cost of living right now, but that might not be the lifestyle you want to live. Do you want to drive a Porsche? If so, you should probably get a job that pays better than working at Target. Do you want to live in San Francisco? If so, I wouldn’t pursue a career at a restaurant.

The more you want to do this, the more money you should be planning to make first.

All that is well and good, you may say, but there’s a disconnect: all the high-paying jobs require degrees!

Not so. I decided to do some research on the subject, and while I found that a Bachelor’s Degree or higher tends to lead to more lucrative career paths, there are several jobs that you can do without an expensive, time-consuming, four-year degree that also happen to pay pretty well.

So how do you get started? Take the dream job visions out. Assume you can’t afford to continue to live at your current income level, meaning you can’t do four years of college to get this job. Assume the number one goal is to start bringing home a reasonable paycheck you can live on (which, if you don’t have one yet, should definitely be your goal right now). What can you do as a U.S. citizen in 2019?

I’ve compiled a list of answers to that question.

High School Diploma (or Equivalent) Opportunities

Sell Phones, Cars, and TV

Everyone loves to hate on salespeople. Car salespeople are criticized the most, with the folks selling smartphones, TV and internet, and insurance not far behind. And to be sure, salespeople can be frustrating and obnoxious. But the fact is, it’s not selling in general that bothers us, it’s feeling like we’re being sold to. We don’t get this feeling from a good salesperson, or good advertising. We typically get it when a salesperson doesn’t believe the words they’re saying to sell to us, which is pretty common on sales floors.

You might be surprised how much money you can make in sales (just don’t put it in a drug money briefcase like some guy did to make this stock photo).

But here’s the deal: if you can find a product or service you can get behind and vouch for yourself, most of the struggle of selling is taken away, and the pay can be pretty respectable. At T-Mobile I was paid roughly $55,000/year to sell smartphones, depending on commission. My former manager went to work at a Nissan dealership selling Leafs and makes over $70,000/year. Comcast/Xfinity/whatever they want to call themselves are making retail outlets now to sell both their wireless service and their cable and internet packages, and a friend of mine works at one making similar income. No degree necessary, no certification necessary.

Of course, the big thing to be aware of with these positions is that your mileage will definitely vary. The T-Mobile I worked at was a popular store, meaning there were lots of customers, meaning there was lots of commission to be made. The Sprint across the road was a ghost town, which I’m sure would be great if you want a job you can coast through, but it won’t help your commission check out next month.

Similarly, trying to sell unpopular car models will be a non-starter (heh). There will be a bit of fluctuation in your income at any of these jobs because they’re at least partly commission-based, but the phone stores, at least, pay a base wage so you’re always making something. If you can stick with it, though, you can eventually build up a base of repeat customers who you can work with over and over to make things easier.

Mostly, a good strategy here is to do your homework, but it’s certainly a better place to head to in retail than at a Target or a Walmart.

Work With Your Hands, Learn on the Job

There’s also a general distaste for blue collar jobs, even though it’s probably a great choice for a lot of people to work with their hands or work outside. If the idea of staring at a computer screen in an office all day is your worst nightmare, consider looking into a trade job. There are lots of opportunities for welders, plumbers, oil field workers, elevator repairpeople, nuclear reactor and power plant operators, transportation inspectors, subway and street car operators, electrical-power line installers, petroleum-pump-system operators, gas-plant operators, and boilermakers out there.

Also, you might actually look this cool one time.

All of these jobs pay $50,000-$70,000/year on average, and as long as you have a high school diploma you’re qualified to start in the trade because they train you on the job. You’ll presumably start below the average, but I’ve met plumbers and welders who make six-figure salaries in their trade. Consider looking into what opportunities are in your area and check them out.

Protect the People

A friend and reader wrote in to add another option to this list, which is typically missed by articles about high-paying jobs that don’t require a Bachelor’s Degree. There are several law enforcement jobs, such as police positions and dispatchers, which typically pay about $60,000/year, train employees on the job, and require neither a degree nor a previous certification. Plus, you will be doing a job that is unquestionably important and helpful to people, which is its own reward, especially if you have ever experienced the nearly-useless drudgery of working at many fast-food restaurants and big-box retail stores.

There are some minor caveats to being a police dispatcher—one major one is that you’ll be working some long hours (my friend said she works twelve-hour workdays pretty frequently). However, when I asked if she was expected to work graveyard shifts, she clarified that you are typically either a day shift employee or a night shift employee, not both, so she never has to work nights. That beats the inconsistency found at most entry-level jobs, let me tell ya, on top of that part where they pay about three or four times more.

High School Diploma + Certification Opportunities

Develop Software

I can tell you from personal experience that software developers are paid pretty well. I personally make $65,000/year and, at least in the Northern Colorado area, that’s considered below the overall industry average.

I don’t even see the code. I just see the head, the body, some gross PHP…

This link, which is mostly accurate and inspired several sections of this article, claims you’ll need an associate’s degree and will be paid $62,000/year for web development. In my experience, neither of these things are true. Now, to be fair, the company I work for, Radial Development Group, does both web and native app development (and the “app” part is probably worth noting—web apps and websites are very different things). But all the same, it is not unheard of to get a starting salary of $60-70k as a junior software developer, and I learned to code through an online coding bootcamp, not through a traditional college.

Operate a Plane or Boat

My former T-Mobile coworker was working on getting his pilot’s license the whole time I worked with him. As this site points out, commercial pilots need a certification, but not a degree, and are often paid around $73,000/year. Business Insider points out that you can earn similar income with similar qualifications as a captain, mate, or pilot of a water vessel (like tugboats and ferryboats).

It’s sure to be a more stressful task, but if you’re good at keeping your cool and staying focused, being an air traffic controller can net you up to $122,000/year, no degree necessary.

One important thing to consider here, as with some of the other jobs I have mentioned, is that you should consider how this job fits your lifestyle. Real estate agents are typically paid based on how many houses they sell, similar to how car and phone salesmen are paid. Busy months will mean a lot of money; slow months will mean you better have something saved up, or have additional income in the household to cushion the blow. If your income is one of two incomes, the fluctuations in commission-based jobs are likely to be easier to swallow than if you rely too heavily on the busy months to make it through.

Similarly, understanding how you will be paid can mitigate this. If you are always paid something in a sales job no matter how well you sell, that stability may be of greater value to you than a job that technically pays more, but fluctuates dramatically throughout the year.

Associate’s Degree Opportunities

Help People Stay Healthy

In my previous post, I discussed some of the healthcare jobs on the market that pay extremely well and require extensive schooling—surgeons, of course, are the absolute top of their field in pay (not to mention prestige).

But if you don’t have $100k or so to blow on schooling, you can also get a respectable salary as a radiation therapist, dental hygienist, or nuclear medicine technologist—right around $70,000/year. You’ll need an Associate’s Degree for these positions, but that’s a tiny fraction of the cost of a doctorate.

Takeaways

Some of these jobs, of course, are not going to be available in everyone’s area—it can be hard to get into a new industry, even one that allows for remote work like software development, when you don’t live near where the action happens.

Additionally, many of these jobs are labor-intensive or are traditionally gendered, which limits their ability to help everyone looking for a higher-paying career. Some are not for the faint of heart—air traffic controllers seem to reliably crop up at the head of the pack of high-paying jobs that don’t require a degree, but I’ve also heard it’s a tremendously stressful job.

Lastly, some of these jobs can pay well, but don’t necessarily pay well on a reliable basis because they rely heavily on commission or seasonal work.

Saving takes time, so don’t waste time at a job that will never pay you a living wage.

However, I feel there’s a good amount of variety here, enough that you can probably find something in this list that can help you get on your financial feet, even if it doesn’t quite make for a dream job. If you’re in a tough spot financially and you’re trying to land a dream job, it’s at least a better interim strategy than working at a fast food joint that will pay you as little as they legally can. All of these careers have the potential to put you in a much better position to save some money for a car, a house, retirement, or any other big expenses you see in your future, and if it turns out you like one of these careers better than that dream job you had in mind, there’s nothing stopping you from sticking with it.

Are there any other worthwhile career fields you know of that don’t require a four-year degree that you’d like to see mentioned here? Let me know in the comments!

Coming from a background of retail and food service jobs, Radial Development Group’s hiring process was strange to me. I first reached out to Radial while I was partway through my software development bootcamp curriculum with Bloc. Part of Bloc’s selling point was that they would not only teach you to code in high-demand programming languages like Ruby and JavaScript, but that they would also help you enter the job market. As such, they encouraged me to reach out to people in the development community near me, apply for jobs, and start working to get my foot in the door.

At the time, I did not hear back from Radial, possibly because they wouldn’t have had a clue who I was, and possibly because I’m pretty sure the company’s management structure was changing significantly around that time and there’s a good chance my resume was lost in the shuffle. Regardless, I got no response.

But the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. Radial wrote web applications in the same programming languages I was learning, so I felt I would be able to offer them relatively good value as junior developers go. Plus, they were located in Loveland, Colorado, which was a perfect geographic fit for me.

So I applied again when I was closer to the end of Bloc’s curriculum, sending a resume to the owner, co-founder, and manager of the company, Ben West. This time, I got a reply, and we met up and discussed how the company operated and if they were currently hiring.

(A quick note for anyone who really wants a specific job and didn’t get it the first time: apply again. I did this at Simply Mac, T-Mobile, and Radial, and there’s something about the second application that seems to show employers you’re worth taking a chance on, even if your resume doesn’t quite check all of the boxes.)

I got a strange answer about the company’s hiring status. There was a direct “No,” they were not hiring, but also an upfront statement of how much I would be paid in such a position and an offer to let me code at the Radial offices while I continued working through Bloc. I expressed interest in the position and that was the end of it.

I figured I might hear back if an opening came up, but for the time being, I kept searching. I went to a Boulder Ruby Group Meetup where Kate Catlin, founder of Find My Flock, was looking for support in contributing to an open-source project, Women Rising. Bloc’s curriculum asked for me to make ten open-source project contributions, so I jumped on the opportunity to contribute to a Rails project that had been started in Colorado.

As it happened, Ben was a friend of Kate’s, so I wound up chatting with him again over Slack. Now look, I’m not a destiny/fate/“it was meant to be and the stars aligned” type of guy, but it seemed like Ben and Radial kept cropping up everywhere I went. Kate told me at the Meetup how great Radial had been in supporting Women Rising, and that told me that it was really worth pushing harder to land a job there.

Long story short, I wound up working on Women Rising at the Radial offices—there was some strange issue where the form for one model needed to accept data for another model, and it was not really set up to do so. The solution involved an `accepts_nested_attributes_for` or two, at least one `f.collection_select`, and a lot of confusion on my part.

In short, I learned pretty quickly by pairing on the project with Rebecca Klein and Ben that my experience at Bloc was little more than a taste of what it was like to work on a live codebase with real users. Fortunately though, the Radial team was patient with me, supportive of my efforts, and open to my likely-stupid questions.

I ultimately delivered the contribution in the form of a sizable PR, which my Bloc mentor graciously counted as several open-source contributions rather than one. But more important than contributing to the code, truthfully, was the fact that it had given me the opportunity to work with the Radial team. I had met with Ben several Thursday mornings at a local coffeeshop, Dark Heart, and we had shared a lot of background about ourselves. We had both worked a lot of jobs full of thankless work and nearly-thankless pay; we were both critical of the gig economy as an underhanded way to get out of actually taking care of employees; and we both faced immense struggle with student loan debt that made the process of entering adulthood feel like it was a race run with ankle weights.

While I certainly know Ben and the Radial team much better now than I did then, these things all gave me examples of the Radial company culture. When Ben eventually offered me a job interview, I had a sneaking suspicion that the decision was more or less made before the interview began—if he didn’t like me working at Radial, I suspect he would have told me to leave before he started paying me.

Bloc had warned me about the possibility of technical interviews in the hiring process, where I would need to write a FizzBuzz function on a whiteboard or some such thing. Fortunately, my interview at Radial contained nothing of the sort, possibly because Ben himself was a developer and knew that FizzBuzz is worthless as a measuring stick of a software developer. I had only vaguely begun to understand this at the time, but now I can see with some certainty that every software project is specialized. Every project has particular needs that led to particular choices in the codebase that make it complex in a unique way, and no amount of industry experience can prepare you for it completely.

Instead, I got the sense that Ben wanted to know how I would lead a project, how I operated as an employee, and what I would do when handed hundreds of problems with no clear solution (incidentally, I think a lot of companies of all sorts could learn from this strategy). As I would later learn, the job I was hired for, Developer Lead, was not clearly structured; the projects I would work on had processes for development and deployment, but only in a vague sense that didn’t encapsulate their specific needs; and in general, the downside of the freedom and authority that comes from working at a small company is that there aren’t really any concrete guidelines for a lot of things. Ultimately, the job I was being offered was one that I would be making up myself.

The interview is now something of a blur to me. I always feel a lot of pressure in job interviews, no matter what the manager interviewing me does, and so I tend to forget what happened in them when they’re over. But I attempted to allude to the main thing I had learned from the dozen or so jobs I had held prior to working at Radial: school teaches kids to work exactly the opposite way from how the workforce works. In school, you are given tests, and the goal of a test is to avoid being wrong.

In work, there’s typically no way to study in advance, so the goal is not to avoid being wrong, but instead to be wrong now, to fail fast. Then you can figure out why you’re wrong and go solve the problem before it becomes your client’s problem. Super Target didn’t show cashiers any documentation on how to add a transaction to a gift registry or process a tax exemption; Old Chicago didn’t tell dough cooks they should mix their artisan dough first so it can proof while the cook is sheeting the cornmeal dough; Simply Mac’s training courses didn’t teach me how to check for liquid damage in an iPhone; and even two weeks of training at T-Mobile didn’t cover how to process Early Termination Fee reimbursements as opposed to Equipment Installment Plan Reimbursements. But I learned all of those things by asking questions and being wrong as soon as possible.

I think this is ultimately what landed me the job, whether Ben knew it before I said any of it or not, and I will always be tremendously grateful that Radial was willing to give me my first job as a software developer because of it.

While I typically try to give direct advice to the reader about financial decisions in my blog posts on the subject, I sometimes find it helpful to pause and document my own personal finance journey. This, I hope, can give you some context for where my perspective comes from and make the problem feel a little more concrete.

In this case, I’m continuing my so-called “Debt Wars” series because of a recent development: my fiancee’s student loans officially went into repayment because she completed her Master’s Degree over six months ago. We were already paying $600/month toward my student loans, and this adds a further $300/month for hers. Her loan balance is lower than mine ($53,130 versus $63,908 as of this writing), but the payments are so much lower because we picked a slower repayment plan for the time being while we try to make it out of 2019 alive financially.

You see, life was going to get more expensive this year for us anyway. Our rent is about to go up with our roommate, my sister, moving out, from $1000/month to $1500; we are going to be paying for a nontrivial portion of our wedding costs; and we are hoping to transition into homeownership later this year. We have a decent amount of money saved up to help us accomplish these goals (about $16,000 as of this writing), and we are fortunate enough to have a respectable combined household income of about $96,000/year.

But this is the crux of the frustration for me with student loan debt. The cost of living in Northern Colorado, while not as obscene as, say, San Francisco, is pretty high to begin with. Between our student loan payments and our car payment of $400/month, we pay $1300—almost an entire paycheck for me—into loans before we use any money on anything.

This makes it meaningfully harder to get married, to buy a house, to start a family. Meanwhile, idiots write articles about how millennials are “killing” the market for diamonds, beer, and Applebee’s, none of which had any value to begin with.

Hmm. Why would people paying $900/month for the audacity of getting an education be skipping out on your worthless (or even cruel or dangerous) product?

“Well, the market can bear it, so the prices should rise, durk-a-dur.” Just because a thing like education or healthcare can continue rising in price because it dramatically impacts an individual’s quality of life doesn’t mean that it should. You can price gouge people until they can’t afford to survive on their poverty wages, but that doesn’t make it right. Anyway, the whole “the market is bearing it so it’s fine” argument is contradictory to the notion of encouraging a competitive market. The fact is, it’s not fine, and we shouldn’t accept it as “fine” if we’re true ‘merican capitalists anyway.

One bright spot in this whole fiasco is that my car balance has dropped significantly since I wrote Episode I, from $17,000 to $10,768. Give it another year or two, and we can check that one box off! It seems like it’ll never end, but for now we’ll keep on keeping on.

As you can probably surmise, this is one frustrating situation. Is anyone else dealing with a similar struggle with their student loans or other debts? Let me know how you’re handling it in the comments!

Are you finishing up high school and thinking about going to college? If you are in your late teens, you have probably gotten a lot of advice from the people around you about whether or not you should dive into higher education immediately after becoming a legal adult.

I am not a financial expert or a self-made millionaire, but I am twenty-six years old, so I had to make this decision myself a few years ago and have been living with the consequences since then. Historically, the type of advice I hope to give you in this article was given to people by their parents, which was all well and good… until recently. Now, technology is evolving faster than ever, and that is changing our culture (and the economy) so quickly that the advice your parents can give you about this decision is likely irrelevant to the modern world.

So here is my personal advice on what you should do with your time after you finish up high school and become a legal adult. There are four crucial considerations to make, as far as I can tell, so let’s talk about those.

Pro tip: don’t go to college because half of them look like a damn castle. You can always visit the castle they filmed Harry Potter at later.

#1: The Money Problem

First and foremost, as you’ve likely heard, college is expensive. But I don’t just mean “you’ll need to bust your ass the summer before it starts and you’ll be okay” kind of expensive, which is how it may have been for your parents. I mean it’s really expensive.

But what do I mean by “really expensive”? Let me give you some real-life numbers—the ones I was, and am, working with:

I went to college at Colorado State University from 2010 to 2015. I took the year off because I went into college undeclared, unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. I came back to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies, a minor in English, and a minor in Business Administration. I had no scholarships, but some financial aid in the form of Colorado’s College Opportunity Fund. My first year, when I took out loans to cover the cost of living on campus, cost over $16,000. Each subsequent year, in which I worked my way through college to pay rent, cost $10,000-$13,000 each.

By the time I got my diploma, I had accrued over $50,000 of student loans including interest. My freshman year loan was done through Wells Fargo; the rest were done through the FedLoan servicing, one of the government’s loan services for public loans.

And remember, this was from 2010 to 2015, when college cost a little less than it does now.

That cap and gown (which the college also made me pay for) were totally not worth it! Disclosure: that guy in the picture is not me. I was not nearly that happy.

So college is going to cost you a lot of money. A $50,000 loan, for me, originally translated to monthly payments of $1000/month before I refinanced them. Now, I pay $600/month).

“That’s no big deal!” you say. “I’ll make $20,000/year at my local Target or Wal-Mart and have that paid off in three years!”

You haven’t lived on your own, fictional speaker, have you?

Ok, ok, I’m sure you, dear reader, are smarter than the fictional speaker. First, because a $20,000/year wage is before taxes; second, because you will have lots of expenses besides your student loans to pay anyway when you moved out of your parents’ place ($1000/month in rent is pretty reasonable here in northern Colorado, and it’s pretty easy to spend well over $500/month on food if you aren’t careful); and third, because interest.

Still, I felt it was worth pointing out that those things are all the case, and that you will be miserable trying to pay $600/month in student loans while working at Target. I didn’t feel I could comfortably pay my loans until I was reporting $50,000/year in income on my taxes, and even then it was gut-wrenching.

Long story short: life in the United States is expensive without your parents, and if you’re taking out student loans like me, you absolutely do notwant to be paying student loans on top of it all.

Make sure you know the math. Don’t let a college manipulate you!

“But what if I want to go to college and I have a financial solution?”

That’s terrific! Knock yourself out, fictional speaker. If you definitely want the college experience, definitely know what you want to do in college, and your parents can pay for your education (or you have a hefty load of scholarships helping you out), the money problem is not a problem for you.

Otherwise, think long and hard about how expensive it will be to go college. Don’t let your parents, your peers, or even me sway you if you don’t feel you’re financially ready.

#2: The Confidence Problem

The second big problem with people going to college is that they often do it, not because they want to, but because they don’t know what else to do with their lives. But make no mistake: blowing $50,000 while you figure things out is a bad way to start your adult life.

In short, you should absolutely not go to college with an undeclared major, period (don’t do what I did). That shows that you have no clear purpose for what you’re doing, and are digging yourself a massive financial hole while you decide.

Not pictured: the existential dread of having to pay student loan balances they’ve been willfully ignoring for four years or more.

“But what if I know exactly what field I want to go into, and it requires a degree?”

Just like before: go for it! If you know, in your heart and soul, that you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher, and you have a reasonable financial solution to pay for the degree (the first two might even pay for themselves, really), by all means go get the degree.

The thing to bear in mind is that there is plenty to do in the adult world that you have likely not experienced, will likely want to do, and don’t need to take out a loan to try while you make up your mind about what “dream job” you even want. For example, it could be a great idea to get a starting job, maybe somehow connected to a field you’re vaguely interested in, move in with some roommates, and see what it’s like to pay bills and live without your parents.

That may sound simple, but it will likely challenge you in some way—the chores are split between you and your roommates rather than you, your parents, and your siblings; you have complete freedom to eat a gallon of ice cream, and to suffer the consequences of doing so; and there will be no one at all to remind you that you need to leave that money in your bank account because rent is due before your next paycheck. You even have to go out of your way to meet new people your age, where school was secretly giving this element of life to you for free.

You can buy this with your money, and no one else’s approval.

These are essential things to understand so you can adult more effectively for the rest of your life. But interestingly, we prioritize going to college over learning these things firsthand, early, when we’re young and the stakes are low. No one is going to teach them all to you because they quickly become second nature after doing them for a year or two, but it’s better not to get slammed with them in addition to the challenge of proving to businesses that your degree is worth something (which, make no mistake, they will question, because most college degrees are not that helpful in the workforce).

Plus, if you do get a job in a field you’re interested in, excel at it, and enjoy it, it’s still quite possible to work your way up the ladder to the job you actually want—and that path doesn’t cost $50,000.

Learning is immensely valuable, but books aren’t only found in schools.

#3: The Value Problem: “What if I want to be a writer, a welder, or a software developer?”

Another major problem I see with how people decide on going to college is that they often assume they need a college degree for a field that absolutely does not require one.

Yes, you can get a degree before pursuing any of the jobs I listed above, but none require it. I don’t need my degree to write this blog, even though the writing practice and tutoring helped; my coworker’s spouse is a welder and didn’t need a degree for it; and in the entire software consultancy I work for, Radial, there are several employees with college degrees, but none with Computer Science degrees.

For all of these endeavors, I absolutely suggest getting training to pursue the career path. It is likely worth it to pay a mentor to teach you a craft like writing or photography that could (eventually) pay better than Walmart or McDonald’s, and will certainly be more fulfilling and flexible. It is also worth considering the idea of pursuing a semi-formal education online (by going to a coding bootcamp, for example, if you want to learn to code). Some career fields, like welding, plumbing, or construction work, will even pay you on the job to learn the craft.

Some of these options cost money, but none cost $50,000 in inescapable student loan debt—which is to say, if you decide to take out student loans despite my warnings, you can’t escape them by declaring bankruptcy. It’s totally fine, maybe even encouraged, to spend money to educate yourself, because it will give you that “well, I did spend money on this” feeling on the days when you’d otherwise give up. But a $10,000 six-month coding bootcamp is an absolute steal compared to a $50,000 four-year college degree, and many come with money-back guarantees.

Relax a little!

#4: The Urgency Problem

Clearly there are several scenarios where it’s still worth it, in my mind, to go to college. As long as you have a financial plan, know exactly what degree you want to pursue, and that degree is necessary for the job you want, it’s totally fine to go to college. You’ll probably like it more than high school. But even with that possibility in mind, there’s one final caveat to consider: there’s no rush.

None at all. Not even a little bit. You’ve likely felt like there is one, because you have a busy schedule and lots of well-meaning adults telling you to hurry up and “figure out what you want to do with your life.”

But rushing it is maybe the worst thing you could do. What career path to pursue and whether or not you should go to college are big, momentous life choices, now more than ever because college is so ridiculously overpriced in the U.S. Making a snap judgment about them is a great way to wake up when you’re fifty with a job you despise.

Besides, you have over forty years in the workforce in which to make something of yourself. Now is a great time to experiment, to screw up, to figure out what you enjoy. You could literally spend the next ten years trying different jobs and ideas out, messing up every single thing you do in the process, wake up at twenty-eight, and still be the youngest person in the room at most companies you’ll work for (at twenty-six, I’m the youngest full-time developer at Radial).

The thing is, you can only truly know if you’ll like a job if you’ve done it, which is why you’re likely struggling to pick a career path—I sure was. I return to my earlier advice: start at the bottom of the career field you think you’ll really love, work for the experience, and supplement it with a shit job at a retail outlet or restaurant if you must, because they usually don’t pay the guy who gets the coffee very well.

Then, when you find out you actually hate working at a music studio and your real passion is photography, you haven’t spent $50,000 on a music degree.

You know what’s better than high school? Being an adult.

Closing Thoughts: High School Will Not Be the Best Time of Your Life

I’m not sure about you, but while I was in high school, I kept hearing this mantra that I should “cherish” it, because it’s the best time of your life. Guess what?

That was a load of horse shit. Complete, utter, horse shit. Every year since I was nineteen, my life has gotten meaningfully better and more fulfilling.

Honestly, every time people told me high school is the best part of life, it’d make me feel miserable about the future. I didn’t like high school much, so it sounded like there was nothing to look forward to.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some perks to being in high school that you’ll miss. You probably have some free time, you don’t have to worry about bills or paychecks, and school made it much easier to meet people your own age (honestly I’m not sure where twenty-six-year-olds hang out).

But for my part, I would never, ever trade my life now for my life in high school. In high school, I might be wealthy. Next week, I could be broke. I might be able to buy that video game I want right now. I might not. I might be able to get the food I’m craving. I might have to wait. None of that was my choice; it was all my parents’ decision, and I felt I had to deal with the consequences whether the decision was good or not.

Pictured: things you are more likely to feel after high school than during it

Now, whether I make the right decision or the wrong one, the choice is mine. I can just drive somewhere, or go on a walk when I’m stressed, or eat ice cream when I had a rough day. There’s no curfew. Oftentimes there isn’t even a penalty.

Of course, as the adults will say, these freedoms come with more responsibility. If you make too many bad decisions, you run out of money, you don’t pay rent on time, and now you’re homeless. If you don’t take the time to take care of yourself (pro tip: always give yourself at least one day a week off), you’ll find yourself stressed and exhausted on a regular basis, caffeine or no.

But let me tell you, when you get used to the difficulty spike, being an adult is way, way better, as long as you can do basic math and are moderately responsible. So get really good at it, then decide if college is really what you need. The answer is probably no, because life’s too short to pay $600/month in student loans for fifteen years.

My fiancee and I, at present, have over $100,000 of debt between the both of us. The vast majority of that is student loans, with about $12,000 of it being a car loan, because we had the audacity to get college degrees in the United States without having rich parents.

A bit scary to live with, right? It absolutely is. My fiancee’s student loans are just entering repayment; mine are already in repayment to the tune of $600/month. It makes finances a lot harder. If our rent would normally be $1000/month (dirt cheap in Northern Colorado), we may as well think of it as $3000—$1000 for the actual rent, $600 to my student loans, $400 to the car, and another $1000 into what was our “debt snowball.”

That term was coined by Dave Ramsey, the smiling man in the picture below. He’s a financial advice guy with several books, a podcast, live events, the whole nine yards. When I got frustrated with my student loan payments, he was one of the first people I was told I should listen to by the people around me.

The reason is that Ramsey hates debt, passionately. His business is built on a one-size-fits-all financial solution to building wealth: save $1000, pay off all of your non-house debt, save a bigger emergency fund, invest lots of money, pay off the house, and live comfortably forever.

For the most part, this is good advice. You could certainly do a lot worse, and spend a lot more money on sleazy financial advisors than it’ll cost you to explore Dave’s website or read his book (he doesn’t pay me, by the way).

But doing some simple math, you’ll probably observe that this approach of paying off all of your debts before ever saving and investing is leaving a lot of money on the table for someone like me. That’s several years of debt payments with absolutely no saving accumulation that I’m choosing to do. I could probably get a down payment together for a rental property, invest in the S&P 500, get into some REIT’s, and buy some shares of healthy dividend-paying blue chip stocks on Robinhood, and start building myself a nice passive income instead.

Of course, this is the problem with one-size-fits-all solutions in general: it sort of fits everyone, but perfectly fits almost no one.

Remember when people used actual calculators?

In fairness, there are a few grains of salt from Dave himself that you should bear in mind before going hog-wild eating nothing but ramen for three years while you pay down your student loans. First of all, when people call into him and say they make $10/hour at Walmart, the first thing he (correctly) tells them is that their problem isn’t the debt, their problem is the income. You have no leverage if your income is next to nothing, and make no mistake, $10/hour is next to nothing in 2019.

Fortunately, my household is sitting around $96,000/year right now (feeling squeamish hearing about other people’s finances yet? Don’t worry, it’s just the America in you). That’s not “rolling in it”, exactly, but with a reasonable lifestyle, we have about $2000/month that we can throw at debt, savings, or whatever other financial goals we have.

I observed this flexibility in action because we’re getting married this year, so having some money set aside seemed like a good idea. And the thing is, it makes more mathematical sense for us to build some passive income streams now, when we’re young and in our mid-twenties, than to keep eating ramen for several years until the debt goes away (speaking of, this blog could be a great income stream for us if you like this article and want to help me get rid of the ads).

Hey, I have to eat too. Takes a lot of Washingtons.

Another grain of salt is that if you read that book I linked above, The Total Money Makeover, it feels as though Dave has made several assumptions about you before you started reading. He tends to assume that you are middle-aged, are already married, have a house in suburban America, probably have a few kids, and, again, have a respectable income to begin with.

Many of these are not true for our household. We’re younger, meaning we can leverage time better than many of Dave’s readers, who are trying to fix a financial crisis in their 50’s rather than a big, but not-insurmountable problem, in their 20’s. We also aren’t married, don’t have a house, and don’t have kids. We only recently built a respectable income (I got a job as a software developer; my fiancee got a job as a teacher. The two combined equal one reasonable household income at present).

Your money grows when you invest it. Look at the metaphor! Look at it!

I’d also argue that Dave’s solution is designed to be stupid-proof, again by necessity, because he’s speaking to everyone. And if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant or a retail environment (which is to say you’ve dealt with the public), you know there are a lot of dumb people around.

So, there are a few things he says that I don’t strictly agree with, but I understand why he says it to people who constantly make bad financial decisions. For example, in his book, Dave says you should never use a credit card, because then you’ll never spend money you don’t really have. I say you can use a credit card (especially cash-back cards, where the rewards are more likely to be put to use than flier miles) if you are conscious of your budget and don’t go and blow money constantly. Be smart about it and it’s not a problem! For reference, I tend to use just one credit card with no annual fee and a consistent cash back rate for all transactions, then pay it off with every paycheck. For me, that means a free meal with my fiancee or a free tank of gas pretty much every month.

Dave also suggests saving $1000 for a rainy day, but not saving any more until you pay off all of your debts. I have a wedding coming up, we need to get another car soon, and we’d like to buy a house sooner rather than later. $1000 won’t do squat to solve those problems. I have $12,000 saved up right now in savings and investments, and plan to add more. Eventually, I’d like these to build up to a stream of passive dividend income so I can worry less about how much my job pays me. Dave does admit that there are times to halt the debt snowball, but I’m not sure we’d agree on how often that should be.

Mostly, I notice that Dave’s advice tends to assume you can’t figure out how to build passive income streams in general without a financial advisor, which is patently false. I’d rather devote my money to investments that pay me for no work than save a few hundred bucks by paying my car loan down faster. It may take time, but I’d rather have doubled my monthly income in ten years than be completely debt-free.

All in all, Dave’s advice isn’t bad. It’s actually pretty good in general. But it’s worth remembering that it makes more sense for people with small debt balances ($5000-$10,000, for example, is small in my book) and folks who are older. For me, there are more pressing things to do with my money.

Post number 58.

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So you’re tired of living paycheck to paycheck…

Let’s hush the noise and talk for a moment.

You’ve been told, I’m sure, that “money isn’t everything.” In fact, it may just be “the root of all evil.” Who told you this? The media, of course, and people who listen to it. Perhaps some of the folks who repeat these mantras ad nauseam are well-intentioned, and are trying to encourage you not to be greedy.

Except that there’s a problem with this blanket perception of wealth in a society that operates on fiat currency: it makes people think that being wealthy is a bad thing. I know, you say you would love to win the lottery, right? If some unfathomable, unattainable pipe dream were to occur, you’d be happy that it happened.

Most folks, if they’re honest, would say no to most or all of those last few questions. This has resulted in a society where we don’t talk about money because we’re all bad at managing it and don’t know why. I swear, some people would rather talk about their sex lives than their finances! I mean sure, you can penny-pinch and spend less at Starbucks and pay down your debts and whatever the latest craze is, but at the end of the day (and I want to be clear about this),

You will not become wealthy working at a grocery store

Period. The math does not add up. So the job matters. The quality of life matters—if your commute or coworkers or boss or workplace exhausts you, it’s much harder to stay on top of the job and everything else going on at home.

Is the job full-time or part-time? That matters tremendously, too. The graph above’s source discusses how hourly pay, in inflation-adjusted dollars for nonsupervisory roles, has nearly caught up to its peak in 1972. But hourly pay doesn’t account for how many hours per week an employee works. In 1972, that number was right around 40—full-time employment was the rule, not the exception. Nowadays, the source suggests, we’re sitting around 33.7 hours per week, likely because companies aren’t legally required to provide healthcare for part-time workers. This makes the graph look quite a bit different:

And if the quality of life and number of hours matter, you can bet the actual hourly pay matters. You can claim money doesn’t matter to you until you’re blue in the face, but it won’t help you when your rent, your student loan bill, and your car payment come due.

So here are a few career path suggestions I’ve tracked down that can pay you a good, solid salary. If you’re already in a high-paying job, that’s fantastic! Let me know in the comments (especially if I didn’t mention your field). But I frequently get questions from peers about what job they should look for, and I wanted to compile a few answers that won’t make them miserable every time they get a bill.

To be clear, as much as I espouse getting a high-income job, I agree that there are more factors than the paycheck to what kind of job you should get. You may not live in an area where some of these options are even available, and you certainly shouldn’t get into an industry you’re sure you’ll hate. But I wound encourage you to pick a job that pays well and you like over a job you love that doesn’t pay anything. Do that thing you love in your free time until it starts paying the bills.

Six-Figure Jobs, Organized by What You Want to Do

Help People or Animals With Physical Problems

Doctors generally don’t decide to be doctors solely for the well-renowned pay (though that pay makes this industry one of the few that is still worth the price of higher-education tuition). Doctors often choose their career path to help people, or animals, with health-related problems. In my research, I found that jobs related to fixing and checking up on physical conditions tend to pay better than those related to mental and emotional conditions. Here are a few examples:

Surgeon.

Physician (even Physician Assistants, who don’t need nearly as much schooling to get started, can pull six-figure salaries)

Veterinarian

Nurse

Optometrist

Dentist

Pharmacist

Anesthesiologist

Obstetrician

Help People Through Mental and Emotional Problems

While the very highest-paid doctors (typically surgeons) make the most bank, if you would rather help people through stressful situations, relationship issues, and challenging mental disorders like depression or bipolar disorder, there are a couple jobs that can net a six-figure salary while you’re at it.

Psychiatrist

Psychologist

Help People With Financial Concerns, Economic Research

Unsurprisingly, many jobs helping people with their finances, or researching larger economic trends, can net six-figure salaries. If you prefer to work with just a few large accounts rather than many consumer accounts, many of these jobs are also options for business-to-business (B2B) companies.

This is also the first time I’ve touched on the possibility of researching for a living, in the case of the Economist position below. Did you sort of like doing research assignments in school, to the bafflement of most of your peers? You will likely find that working in an educational environment will be a great fit for you.

Financial Analyst or Advisor

Economist

Actuary (I didn’t know what this was before writing this—actuaries determine the financial risk of a specific outcome. For example, you may determine the statistical probability of a customer at a car insurance company crashing their car. Actuaries tend to have impressively-high job satisfaction.)

Beyond the numbers and the stereotypes though, lawyers often say the same thing as doctors about why they chose their profession: they felt that the knowledge they would acquire in their complex field of choice was a tool they could use to help people through difficult situations. In case you’re curious, Intellectual Property Law and Medical Law tend to pay the most.

Lawyer

Judicial Law Clerk

Judge

Magistrate

Arbitrator, Mediator, or Conciliator (often negotiate between two entities, such as for divorce settlements)

Solve Complex Logical Problems

While lawyers could likely fit under this category as well, from what I can tell, solving logical problems is not usually what makes people want to pursue a career in the law. That’s often what people who work with computer systems like to do. With software in particular (my job), you may be fixing styling and formatting, which is a bit more visually-focused, but you will often find that developing software requires managing large amounts of data. Computers are how modern people store data of all kinds—everything from their contact list, items they are selling online, their grocery list, and their credit card information are all stored on computers.

If you like the idea of working on these sorts of problems (in a high-paying industry, no less), a job in computer hardware or software may be the thing for you.

Software Developer/Engineer (the line between those two titles is pretty vague)

Computer/Information Research Scientist

Hardware Engineer

Database Administrator

Traveling and Helping People With It

Admittedly, none of these options mean “go on vacation all year long,” but jobs in the air and at sea can command high salaries, even into the six-figure range. Better yet, as I learned from a friend of mine, there are certifications to becoming an Air Traffic Controller or Aircraft Pilot, but no expensive, time-consuming college degree is necessary.

Air Traffic Controller

Aircraft Pilot, Flight Engineer

Captain or Pilot of a Water Vessel

Transportation Inspector

Build cool things

Again, this field has some overlap with the Hardware and Software Engineers above. But if you like the idea of building things, whether they be electrical systems, buildings, or space ships, many engineering jobs pay handsomely.

Electrical Engineer

Mining and Geological Engineers

Chemical Engineers

Nuclear Engineers

Sales Engineers (usually, this means explaining a technical product in the context of a sale, like selling a new internal computer system to a business)

Aerospace Engineers

Architectural and Engineering Managers

Petroleum Engineers

Solve Complex Mathematical or Scientific Problems

Like the Economist and Computer Research Scientist positions listed above, these jobs tend to be research-heavy and are probably a good pick if you don’t want to be dealing with consumers too much (introverts unite?). They require college degrees, but are another field that’s in enough demand that the pay will be worth the effort.

Mathematician

Astronomer

Physicist

Natural Sciences Manager

Teach People

The going logic is that teachers aren’t paid very well. This is generally true in public school, but college professors and the administrators managing public school teachers can command some respectable salaries. Here are a few fields I found that often pay six figures, but there are likely many more.

Engineering or Architecture Professor

Health Professor

Home Economics Professor

Art, Drama, or Music Professor

Education Administrator

Entertain People

The arts and entertainment industries vary wildly in terms of pay. For every successful writer or video editor, there are often twenty or thirty starving artists (or more). That being said, self-expression is a highly rewarding thing to be paid for, and it’s often achievable if you’re talented (be honest) and a committed self-starter.

Other jobs on this list are not about being creative, but about facilitating people having fun, and getting paid well to do it. Who doesn’t like making people smile?

Gaming Manager (managing a casino)

Makeup Artist

Art Director

Broadcast News Analyst

Writer/Author (this can pay six figures, but is challenging to get into—successful writers typically write lots of things on lots of platforms to get exposure, so this means writing books, writing articles, writing blogs, etc).

Film and Video Editor

Multimedia Artist/Animator

Sell Things

Like to sell things to people? You probably know whether this is the case or not already. Usually, when you’re talking to a good salesperson, it doesn’t feel like they’re selling you anything. It’s more about building a relationship and setting up a sale of a thing that helps someone in some way. Here are a few types of salespeople who can take home six-figure salaries.

Insurance Sales Agent

Pharmaceutical Sales Agent

Real Estate Agent

Securities, Commodities, or Financial Services Sales Agent

Work With Your Hands

Like working with your hands and want to skip the lengthy college degree? Many trades like plumbing and welding pay surprisingly well because they’re in such high demand, and you can even get paid to learn on the job.

Elevator Installers and Repairer

Plumber

Welder

Construction/Architectural Manager

Manage People and Businesses

Managers of all sorts are paid six figures, and many businesses need operational employees of some kind (like HR people and Technical Writers) to keep things running smoothly. If you like managing people, you might be surprised how easy it is to get a management position at some companies—lots of people don’t want to manage others, leaving the job unfilled.

Purchasing Manager

Advertising and Promotions Manager

Training and Development Manager

Human Resource Manager

Industrial Production Manager

General and Operations Manager

Public Relations and Fundraising Manager

Compensation and Benefits Manager

Marketing and Sales Manager

Chief Executive

Technical Writer

Financial Manager

Computer and Information Systems Manager

Well, there’s the list! I’m going to do a deeper dive into these positions in future, and also work on a list of jobs that don’t pay six figures, but that pay respectably with no college degree necessary.

It’s hard to believe we’re already at the end of 2018—almost three and a half years since Aarica and I met, and almost two years since I asked her to marry me. But we’re here, and only eight months away from our wedding date.

We couldn’t be more excited for what next year holds (Aarica especially, since she’s getting her braces off shortly, which will mean it’s time for us to get our engagement photos and invites rolling), but for now I’m going to talk about what we’ve been up to since our last Christmas letter.

2018 started off busy and stayed that way. At the very end of 2017, I landed a part-time position as a Software Developer at Radial Development Group, which I worked in conjunction with my full-time position as a Mobile Expert (a glorified Sales Associate) to more effectively pay rent. I was hired on in a sort-of-like-contract-to-hire role as a Lead Developer on one of the many projects our small team was coordinating. Meanwhile, Aarica worked her semester as a student teacher at High Plains School in Loveland. She worked with fifth graders for the first half of the semester, then transitioned to working with the second graders for the latter half.

Emmett did not work.

Neither did the latest addition to the household, Leo, my sister Meghan’s new cat. Emmett sees him as his annoying little brother. I see a giant butt on our table.

But we certainly felt like sleeping along with him after our long work hours. So what did we do?

Go to DisneyWorld, of course!

Animal Kingdom was, well, a zoo. But the Avatar ride and Lion King show were pretty fun!

Aarica had never been to a Disney park, so we thought it was important to see as much as we possibly could.

Cinderella’s Castle. And people scared of rain.

Random visitor names are displayed on the walls on your way into Rock ‘n Rollercoaster in Hollywood Studios. Aarica’s was picked, which made her very excited—her name’s spelling isn’t about to appear on a Coke bottle, after all.

Hollywood Studios is packed to the gills with Star Wars paraphernalia these days. Can’t imagine why.

Epcot was as fun and fascinating as I remembered.

Yes, DisneyWorld is in Florida. Yes, Aarica was cold anyway.

Sooooo we got her coffee.

Ha, look at Aarica’s face on Rock ‘n Rollercoaster!

…Well, touche. I guess I find Space Mountain stars cool?

In short, we had a blast.

But then it was back to work. The High Plains/Radial/T-Mobile shuffle continued until the summer, but we found time to see one of our favorite bands again, The Fratellis.

And got to see Vance Joy at Red Rocks and Blue October at the Ogden.

Vance Joy made a live album of the Red Rocks show!

The summer brought some big changes. Aarica finished her student teaching and dived right into her final classes for her Master’s Degree in Elementary Education, while also picking up a nannying job and applying to about every teaching job she could find to jump right into her new career in the fall.

Meanwhile, I officially closed the door on my life in food and retail, quitting T-Mobile and taking on a full-time position as a Lead Developer at Radial.

Ihaveshakyhandsdon’tjudgeme

Since we haven’t been to enough weddings prior to our own, we went to yet another in June. This one was for Jen, Aarica’s former boss and friend from ABC Child Development Center in Greeley, and her new husband, Britton.

Aarica was a bridesmaid.

The venue was at the top of a mountain that we took a ski lift to get to. It was quite an experience!

Shortly before the school year started, Aarica officially earned her Master’s Degree and landed her first full-time teaching job as a fourth grade teacher at Shawsheen Elementary in Greeley. Here’s her eating ice cream in celebration.

She probably would’ve gone to get ice cream anyway. She rather likes the stuff.

In September, we squeezed one more concert in. After Vance Joy, I felt it was important that we see some badass punk rock in the form of Rise Against at Red Rocks.

And that I rep Radial while I was at it, clearly. But wow it was an incredible show!

We went to lots of great movies this year, as always: Incredibles 2 for our traditional anniversary date; Christopher Robin because of course we saw Christopher Robin (it was quite heartwarming, actually); the utterly-outstanding movies-directed-by-actors, A Star is Born and A Quiet Place; the most underrated movie of the year, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald; the latest in a movie series that has no right to be getting better, but is doing so anyway (Mission Impossible: Fallout); and, of course, the latest Marvel superhero outings (Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Deadpool 2).

Also, we saw disappointment in film form (Solo: A Star Wars Story), but I guess we should’ve seen that coming based on Ron Howard’s recent track record. It was a bit like drinking La Croix.

But we also did a couple of things a bit out of our comfort zone. Like go to a Halloween… festival, I guess you’d call it? There was one in Denver called Pumpkin Nights that we had a lot of fun at with our friends Charlie and Megan Stoddard.

You know you’re old when you have couple friends?

Aarica was there for the owls though, really.

Unfortunately, not all of 2018 was fun, or even positive. We had a great year, albeit a busy and occasionally-stressful one, but our families met with difficult challenges and heartbreak. Aarica’s grandma was hospitalized and had to get surgery; her sister, Karrisa, has been seeing a speech therapist all year after a car accident she was in over a year ago; my family’s labradoodle, Ellie, died at fourteen years old; my sister Caitlin’s fiancé, Lonnie, broke up with her (after proposing to her in the first place, no less), which led to us road-tripping her back to Colorado from New Orleans; and my grandma, Deanna Rice, passed away in October. We flew out to Maryland for her funeral, where I had the opportunity to speak along with my dad and grandpa about what a wonderful example she was to the people around her.

Fortunately, our families came together to support each other in a fashion that deeply moved me. It’s always hard to watch people you care about go through great adversity, but some small part of me welcomes tragedy for the way it brings out the best in people. We habitually joke around until we hurt someone, fail to take serious things seriously, “troll” people to get a rise out of them, criticize creators more than we create things ourselves, and get outraged (or feign outrage) over trivialities rather than daring to let our inner selves show.

But when tragedy strikes, people’s true natures show. We stop talking about the odd little quirks that sometimes drive us crazy about the people we love, and we start talking about how much they really cared about us, and we them.

And in any case, there were also some big successes that came from this year for the people around us. Aarica’s younger sister, Karrisa, has nailed down a career path she wants to pursue that she hopes to dig into when she moves to Alabama when their parents return from Japan. Their younger brother, TJ, joined the junior ROTC while going to school at the US Naval Base in Yokosuka. My sister, Caitlin (the middle child of us three), got a job at Mary Blair Elementary School as a Special Education Paraprofessional, got accepted into at least one Neuroscience Master’s Program (with several more applications pending), and got a new boyfriend named Ty who likes Harry Potter and is therefore cooler than Lonnie. My youngest sister, Meghan, graduated from high school, jumped right into the workforce at the local Culver’s (not to mention the world of paying rent), and snatched an internship at Radial out from under the noses of several college students.

And I’m thrilled that there’s so, so much more in store for us all. For our part, Aarica and I are aggressively paying down student loan debt and hope to have it paid off in the next few years; I’m working on a job-experience-sharing social platform called Novum Opus, which I hope to release version 1.0 of next year; and of course, we’re getting married on August 3, 2019.

She’s thrilled, if her constant Pinterest research is anything to go by. I’m thrilled, because I get to marry the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. And we can’t wait to see you all there.

It strikes me that most of the people I have met in my life, even those who profess themselves forward-thinkers or problem-solvers, seem to consider the laws of their world immutable. For example, suburban living in the United States is a fairly new phenomenon—that is, the notion of having a house with a two-car garage, a spouse, between two and three kids, roughly one dog, between one and two careers, and an utterly useless lawn of grass only cropped up in the 1800’s. Even relative to the minuscule window of time in which humans have populated Earth, that’s not a very long stretch of history.

Yet we consider the modern lifestyle a standard that is not to be deviated from. Similarly, we complain about many of the unreasonable expenses involved in living in the United States, but do little to try and solve those problems. Many of us complain that “they” charge too much for housing, transportation, education, healthcare, or taxes, but almost no one tries to solve those problems. “They” are also “working on” some incredible scientific advancement, incredible new technologies, or new systems for how our lives should operate. “We” are never reasonably expected to accomplish these tasks, only some nameless group that is smarter than us.

This could all just be an anecdotal observation about my particular life experience here in Northern Colorado, but I suspect that it is not. I suspect that most people reading this recognize the type of mindlessly-re-parroted groupthink I am referring to here. The strange thing is that, barring some mental handicaps and a few exceptions, I think that most people could contribute to these societal problems if they truly applied themselves to the task, which is to say that they are smart enough and capable enough to do so.

For example, I recently started a business called Novum Opus, which will have the mission of eliminating the $1.5 trillion of student loan debt in the United States that less-than-wealthy kids have accumulated for having the audacity of wanting an education. It is a daunting task, to be sure, but it is how I want to approach actually solving one of the problems our culture can’t stop complaining about. Or, if I don’t solve it alone, I want to push the ball forward. I want to start solving problems instead of sitting and watching them continue to get worse.

There are some meaningful obstacles I have observed to taking this initiative. A lot of the people who are hurt the most by problems like crippling student loan or healthcare debt are so busy trying to pay bills on time that they have a hard time imagining picking up an extra, income-free grind outside of their day job to start a small business that is not off the ground yet. Life is structured around having exactly one job, most of the time, and coming home to “unwind” can be an immediate productivity killer.

Humans are not machines, and it is totally reasonable for people to pause their careers to spend time with their loved ones or do unproductive things they enjoy (I certainly play enough video games). But I wish I saw more people finding problems in the world and taking a more proactive stance to try and resolve them than complaining about it to their friends can generally accomplish.

People often underestimate themselves. Sometimes a parent, a teacher, a school bully, or someone in their lives told them they were worthless, or they sucked at math, and they believe that until the day they die. An individual’s eccentricities are squashed out of them because our school system and conveyor-belt-bullshit jobs (the retail and food jobs that mostly require warm bodies and make everyone involved miserable) encourage you to stay still, shut up, and do as you’re told. While each person’s quirks can hurt them in certain situations—an introvert may have a hard time making friends, a disorganized person may lose their keys more often than their peers—it is also those quirks that are our greatest strengths. They can provide us meaningful insight into how we learn, grow, problem-solve, and operate in general.

This is terribly unfortunate. While it is useful to know one’s limitations, it is also important to remember that people can change, learn, and improve over time in just about every measurable metric. Again, humans are not machines—our default behavior is to learn and grow, it does not have to be programmed into us. In fact, given that memories fade over time, if you are not constantly learning, you are in all likelihood going backwards.

And that only makes it harder to get engaged in resolving a problem that requires knowledge in physics, electrical engineering, computer science, or some other technical skill that most people think they’re “too dumb” to understand. You’re not too dumb. You have not applied yourself. There is a vast gulf of difference.

I struggle with these issues as much as anyone. I have a hard time buckling down and learning new software concepts sometimes, even though I work at a software consultancy. I wish I wrote more consistently, read books more consistently, and exercised more consistently. I do all of these things sometimes, but if I’m a decent writer now, I can only imagine how good I could be if I practiced more.

What I hope to get people thinking about is the notion that they can make change. People like you, dear reader, can improve themselves and the world around them. If you already have a list of excuses in your head about why you have not tried to create change where you know it needs to happen, you need to recognize those excuses for exactly what they are. Everyone around you needs your unique view of the world to improve it.

Travis Osanu pushed the door to the hotel room open with the butt of his gun. His eyes widened behind his sunglasses. “Well, shit,” he said, as if announcing himself to the room. There was a corpse on the floor, a fat, middle-aged man. Travis approached it, wrinkling his nose at the smell of blood and excrement and filth. Though it was past sundown, the room was still warm; flies buzzed over the body and the rotting food that had somehow wound up on the floor, though Travis did not think the murder could have happened more than a few hours ago.